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Comment by nologic01 | Hacker News Reader

we are all cogs in the machine. maybe decades ago the stance of individuals could have made a difference but nowadays its clear that it no longer does. there is a collectively created monster that can only be tamed by something of equivalent and greater collective power: radical government regulation. The EU is doing its part. The US isnt.

imho nothing was learned from the previous Microsoft monopoly era. Information technology is not just any business sector. It is the canvas on which everything else plays out. It needs to be regulated in a way that people can go with online life, politics, business etc. without this Damocles sword permanently hanging above us.

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I think personal action can still make a difference. What if we were to develop a coalition of people that believed in that, sort of like a union for a healthy society?

The coalition would have a common set of standards and ethics, which would include the development of more community-based standards for technology. With such a coalition, we could create our own technology not in the hands of technology companies, and we could be more responsible in the development and use of technology. Then the entire coalition could stop using Google for example...and crush the life out of them.

If such a coalition had ten million people in it, it might work if many of them are technologically capable. Ten million seems like a lot but it's only 1 person getting 2 new people to join, who in turn each get 2 new people to join, etc... 24 times.

I would definitely not be against such a coalition :-).

I think we already effectively have (more loosely defined than your idea) a global community that is based on various open source efforts. Open source is vitally important (and not much appreciated in the usual ossified power centers) phenomenon as it proves that in many critical nodes of information technology: desktop and mobile OS, desktop apps, browsers, social media, and all sorts of libraries etc you can perfectly well have alternatives that are more in line with societal objectives.

But we have now enough of a track record to know the open source mode cannot scale to provide the backbone that everyone deserves. What is missing is the regulatory framework that will induce (and if needed, force) commercial initiatives to be interoperable, ring fenced, small enough to fear and respect clients and users, the opposite of the too-big-to-fail conglomerates, in short: we need companies that are good digital citizens.

Yes, you are right. I agree. Open source is a HUGE benefit and an excellent way to counteract corporations from holding all the resources. In my own professional workflow I use a lot of it, and I also try to give back by contributing tutorials to using it and recommending it as well. I think the world would be a lot worse off without the open-source world.

Isn’t the EFF that (or it’s intention,at least)?

Go on, attempt to form that coalition....

And the next thing you know you'll be on every major news network as a "Communist anti-technology union group looking to hold the US back"

The US has a brutal history of stamping out unions, do you think you're just going to form this group unopposed without massive amounts of money and resistance looking to stamp out your very existence?

> The US has a brutal history of stamping out unions, do you think you're just going to form this group unopposed without massive amounts of money and resistance looking to stamp out your very existence?

I wonder how they are going to do that? I have to admit, your statement scares me less than anything I have ever heard...

the claim 'I was only following orders' has been used to justify too many tragedies in our history.

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